Trouble Getting Married Because She Was "Sized Up as a White Girl"

Most of the United States had anti-miscegenation laws (laws prohibiting interracial marriage) at one time. Most of these racist laws were meant especially to prevent black people from marrying white people, but sometimes other types of interracial marriage were also targeted. Often it was up to the recorder of deeds in each county to enforce the law by refusing to issue a marriage license to couples of mixed race. Ministers and other officials could also get into trouble for performing a marriage ceremony involving a mixed-race couple. Missouri was one such state.

On December 21, 1899, a black man and a young woman named Lucy Griffin, who appeared to be white, called at the recorder's office in Jackson County, Missouri, and asked for a marriage license. I. B. Marlatt, a clerk in the recorder's office, told the couple that it was against the law for whites and blacks to intermarry and that he could be fined for issuing a license to them. 

The young woman, whose skin was "as fair as any white woman's and who had blue eyes and brown hair that was straight and long, told the recorder that she was not a white woman "except in looks. I am of African extraction."  

Lucy, who was described as "very handsome," told Marlatt that he was not the only person who had taken her for a white woman. "There have been a great many mistakes made as to my race and nationality." 

Gossett asked the woman, "Are you willing to make oath that you are a Negro?" 

She said "yes" and signed an addendum to the application swearing that she was of "African descent and African affiliation." Only then did the recorder issue the license. 

 But the resistance to their marriage wasn't quite over for Lucy and her betrothed, a "mulatto" named S. H. Harris. When the couple presented themselves before a judge to be joined in matrimony, Lucy had to convince him, just as she had the recorder's clerk, that she was indeed a black woman. Harris became angry at this point, but Lucy calmed him down, asking him to restrain his temper. He did, and the marriage finally took place.  

Back in Sedalia, where Lucy was from, the local newspaper, upon learning of the marriage, got a chuckle out of the fact that Lucy, the daughter of a matron at the Sedalia train depot, had gotten mistakenly 'sized up as a white girl who wanted to marry a negro." 

Missouri's law against interracial marriage was finally repealed in 1969, two years after the U. S. Supreme Court ruled such laws unconstitutional.